Since Condi’s gone somewhere (probably buying shoes in NYC), let me anticipate what she’ll say when she ever gets back to work: "No one could have predicted that the Georgians would incite the Russians to pursue regime change in Georgia."

At least that’s the story the Administration has been feeding Jonathan Landay.

Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday.

But in the end, the warnings failed to stop the Georgian president — a Bush favorite — from launching an attack last week that on Monday seemed likely to end not only in his country’s military humiliation but complete occupation by Russian forces.

[snip]

Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province’s capital, Tskhinvali.

Me, I agree with Jeff Stein, this is spin, presumably designed to excuse American impotence in the face of Russia’s aggression.

A "surprise." My, oh, my.Except I don’t believe it. As easy as it is to believe that the CIA, etc., blew another huge event, I find it impossible to accept that not one of the 127 Pentagon advisors in Georgia, including Special Forces and intelligence contractors, were clueless about Tblisi’s intent — and preparations — to move into South Ossetia.That just doesn’t pass the laugh test.On July 15, for starters, amid rising tension between Moscow and Tblisi over South Ossetia, some 1,200 U.S. troops launched a three-week long joint military exercise with Georgian troops. Three weeks later, on the night of Aug. 7, "coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgian President Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia."It is simply inconceivable that the Pentagon wasn’t wired to the helmets of Georgian troops, despite the denials of U.S. military officials.

One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more bluntly. “We’re giving them the knife,” he said. “Will they use it?”

As I said, I think the presumed spin is designed to excuse US inaction in the face of an utter lack of means to respond to Russia.But I do think there was an element of true surprise on the part of the US. From Landay:

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

"We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this," the State Department official said. "We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not."

Sounds to me that, whatever the US role in encouraging Georgia to do something rash, the real surprise here was that Russia responded in the way it did–basically pursuing regime change rather than just a response within South Ossetia.

You know it’s funny. Condi, and a bunch of other top aides in this Administration, actually do have expertise on Russia, even on military relations between Russia and its satellite states. Yet even in a sphere where, unlike the Middle East, they’ve got some expertise, they’re still astoundingly incompetent.

91 Responses
to ““No One Could Have Predicted,” Republic of Georgia Edition”

WTF~1200 US troops were in Tblisi on the very eve of the Georgian militaries move into South Ossetia? They started a THREE WEEK joint exercise starting on July 15th? That means they left (if they left?) about August 7th…the day before Georgia began its operation.

I suspect that the US exercise was actually done as part of the preparation for the incursion into the autonomous area. Certainly Georgia’s military wouldn’t take troops out of the theater in order to “play war” with the Americans. It HAD TO BE COORDINATED!

Actually, Rice et. al. only had extensive experience with Russia as part of the Soviet Union. She seems not to have learned a thing about her own specialty since the U.S.S.R. evaporated. But when you can create your own reality, why study? Unfortunately for the U.S., as the Bushies have found out time after time, reality bites.

So, if the US thought it would be a mistake for the Georgians to launch an offensive, and even went to far as to seek assurances that the Russians would not respond beyond a certain point, why would the US cooperate in joint war games?

War games are not just “training,” they are meant as warnings, even provocations, and anyone with a brain (or without one) would have understood this to be a provocation, given the tense situation.

The military spin to Landay is not just “who would have guessed,” its a coverup for Bush administration’s reckless provocation.

1. What did they think would happen?
2. How much did they tell McCain in advance — after all, he went out of his way to be “prescient” about this, so that Broder would notice.
3. Since they knew Georgia’s leaders were anxious to attack, why did they provide the training to do this.
4. Was this a huge set up? And for what purpose?

Since this could only end in a massive Russian smackdown, they only one who might benefit would be McCain, but only if the facts didn’t come out.

The whole point of “joint” military exercises is to train for acting jointly. So the Georgian’s had every reason to expect the Americans would help them when the action began.

This explains why so many Georgians were asking “where are the Americans?” in yesterday’s NYT article. It wasn’t just Bush welcoming their application to NATO, it was the US training to fight along side the Georgians.

This is just a Bush family trait. The elder Bush did the same thing to the Iraqi shia in 1991. The Georgians should have noticed how well that turned out for Iraq before they decided to poke the Russians in the eye.

Meanwhile, the Georgian gov’t announces a truce through the media but makes no representations of same through diplomatic channels or otherwise, and furthermore gives no indication of how this truce would manifest itself, after having launched the blitzkrieg with the aim of Anschluss at the expense of the populace in the targeted province. How could they not expect a drive to push them back.

I was stunned by the fact they had 2000 troops in Iraq (though they might as well have been poker chips; I assume they sat tight on a base somewhere). They initially had 159 troops, then 850 in 2004, then their current force as of March 2007.

Well, it certainly wasn’t an opportunity to let Bush look presidential or as decisive Commander Chimp-in-Chief, was it?

Israel is said to have had advisers in Georgia and has been involved in arms deals there.

Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.

DEBKAfile discloses Israel’s interest in the conflict from its exclusive military sources:

Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.

Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.

Russia seems to have hit the Black Sea port city hard.

Cynical me, I suspect that a deal was struck with Russia to let them punish Georgia hard, perhaps even take the state, in exchange for some major concession related to Israel, US and Iran. Time will tell what that deal was.

The Georgian troops were reported only the border with Iran — which was thought to be better than having US troops there, to avoid “incidents.” Now the US has to replace those positions and what they were doing.

The made in america regime in Georgia was a coup, not an election. Shaashkivili is America’s shill in Georgia. They are part of the plan the U.S. has to gain access to oil and surround Russia. The attack on the province was brutal overkill, very American-styled excessive violence.

Bear in mind that anything with the Washington junta’s fingerprints all over it is highly suspect. If there’s anything you might’ve learned about this regime in Washington, that should be among them, by now.

It was also coordinated with Bush’s absence, and the Olympics, I guess for at least two reasons: Bush, a globally spirited spectator of the games would look like he had been surprised by Russian agression, which would itself evoke memories of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

This event is tragic for the people being massacred by the big bear and it’s little schmuck Putin.

It’s significant because it clearly indicates that the US is a paper tiger. The US is going to invoke the Security Counsel????? How the hell could they when Russia has a veto as a member? Cheney will become Obama’s running mate first.

Kick Russia out of the Big Eight? In their dreams.

They need Russia to blow smoke at thos
e other members of the axis of evil, the ones that Russia has never stopped supplying arms and nuclear help to–North Korea and Iran.

Military Intervention? Out of the question. We’re busy manufacturing Dover coffins in Iraq and Afghanistan while thoroughly breaking the armed forces.

And dimwit Junya and his sidekick Blahnik aren’t up to another Cuban missle crisis Georgia style.

Lessee-

Rice’s qualifications as a Russian scholar (one of the biggest charity events ever at Stanford) are:

She playe piana and practiced “really hard” as a kindergartener.

She has told Oprah’s magazine that “war is like football.”

“I find football so interesting strategically. It’s the closest thing to war. What you’re really doing is taking and yielding territory, and you have certain strategies and tactics.”

Other than liking a class by Joseph Korbel, Madeline Albright’s daddy, it’s not clear wtf qualifies the Condi as a “Russian expert” at all. She was fascinated by cold war politics–so she has rescuscitated them–she’s in the middle of them now and has no way out as a paper tiger.

And this time the nukes are loose. No one knows where the hell they are, but we know they aren’t anyplace good.

After working as a secretary at Honneywell and giving piano lessons, she went back to school and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the relationship of the Czechoslovak Communist party to its army.

Then she got offered a job to teach at Stanford. She was a campaign advisor to Gary Hart. She bumped into Brett Scocroft and worked for him on the National Security Counsel, went back to Stanford, and now she’s evolved the US into a paper tiger.

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

While war was still going on, the CIA was broadcasting messages into Iraq encouraging people to revolt. The uprising started while we were occupying Kuwait and had total control of the air in Iraq, but we allowed Hussein to use helicopter gunships to wipe out the Shia.

After the uprisings were suppressed, Bush said:

I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don’t think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (…) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that we should have intervened in Iraq in 1991 or today in Georgia. I’m arguing that a bully who, for his own amusement or advantage, goads other people into fighting with false promises of support for one side or the other is morally reprehensible.

While war was still going on the CIA was broadcasting messages into Iraq encouraging people to revolt.

Sabotage and psy-ops aren’t part of war? I remember these statements.

And this part of what Bush said is true:

I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein

I remember the no-fly zones being established over Bush’s resistance, and have since interpreted them as the neocon foot in the door towards regime change. That may be more recent history coloring my recollection of the past, though.

Cynical me, I suspect that a deal was struck with Russia to let them punish Georgia hard, perhaps even take the state, in exchange for some major concession related to Israel, US and Iran. Time will tell what that deal was.

I don’t think so. Remember that Bush is like a poker player, a bad one in deep. Putin called his bluff here.

But there is a growing belief in European capitals and in Washington that the return of Russia to a position of great power could mean a redrawing of the Eurasia map, with Europe and the United States giving up on attempts to integrate former Soviet republics in the Caucasus into the Western orbit, while battling with Russia to keep Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states.

”I was stunned by the fact they had 2000 troops in Iraq (though they might as well have been poker chips; I assume they sat tight on a base somewhere). They initially had 159 troops, then 850 in 2004, then their current force as of March 2007.”
—–
Looks like they sacrificed some of their kids in the hopes of currying favor with Bush. I could see the logic of doing that in 2002, but why would anyone do it in 2007? By now, there’s more than enough history for people to know that they shouldn’t cut deals with Bush.

Sort of OT thought for the day: Just how good of a swimmer is Michael Phelps? He’s so good that even the soul-draining presence of George W Bush didn’t stop him from winning two gold medals.

Putinhas referred to Georgian “genocide” in South Ossetia. This isn’t just propaganda — it’s an exact tit-for-tat kind of thing, an allusion to our demand for regime change with Milosevic and, by extension, the recognition of Kosovo.

Italy, whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a friend of Putin’s, is sympathetic to Russia’s position.

“We cannot create an anti-Russia coalition in Europe, and on this point we are close to Putin’s position,” said Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, speaking to the newspaper La Stampa. “This war has pushed Georgia further away . . . from Europe.”

Looking at the article here, I noted a conclusion that the head of parliament in Georgia was seeking glory by forming a greater Georgia, lording it over the Caucasus and what is rightfully hers, god save the queen. This, after weighing the signal from Washington possibibilies, the drive to become part of NATO, and the Baku conduit.

In the latter case, the Kurdistan region armed by the U.S., has been obnoxious wrt oil access, basically shutting down upstream, what connects at Baku. So, it’s a moot point for the time being, the conduit. A pipeline in another direction is being considered as an alternative to the route through the disputed territories at bar.

McCain has been on the board of IRI, the Republican side of the NED, the democratic side being the NDI. Both have been involved in Georgia, with the ‘rose revolution’ being a highlight of that relationship. The introduce NGOs who in turn stir up the masses. It’s repackaged CIA/Spook stuff, post Central America flamingo-ups.

Someone pointed out to me that Google maps shows an empty region in Georgia, along with adjacent countries also in the American fold. Try doing a map search, googling Georgia, Asia.

“Some of us who think of ourselves as liberal, rational, freethinking, freedom-loving patriots have a special problem with anger. We are deeply affected by what we see going on in our country. We see a symphony of outrage heaped upon outrage; we see the brazenness of it, its roots in years of secret plotting; we perceive intricate patterns in its serpentine, many-tentacled, conspiratorial vastness; we see our sacred precepts violated, sacred vows trashed; we jeer the garishly painted faces of evil as they trot onstage, and our jeers do not seem to be heard and this compounds our outrage; we join our compatriots in outrage, and our righteous anger grows.
We think our anger is justified. The abuses are so obvious, the perpetrators so shameless, the crimes so awful and historic. Who would not be angry? How could anger be our problem?”
But our anger is our problem. At historic moments like this, we are called to come up with something better than anger.”

Some experts, however, wondered whether the administration might have inadvertently sent Saakashvili mixed messages that would have led him to believe he could count on U.S. support if he got into trouble.

Bush lavished praise on the U.S.-educated Georgian leader as a “beacon of democracy.” He gave military training and equipment to Georgia, which supplied the third-largest contingent to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and had promised NATO membership, they said.

Indeed, I get the sense that a lot of US politicians have gotten into the bad habit of taking bad-faith positions on Georgia’s NATO status, counting on Germany and France to block membership. People who don’t necessarily actually want America to guarantee Georgia’s security do want the United States to propose such a guarantee, thus putting us on the right side of the “moral clarity” line, while letting our European allies take the blame for the costs of pragmatism.

Bush reputedly went to war in Iraq, in part, because his gut told him his dad had wronged the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who had rebelled against Saddam. They were crushed after the First Gulf War when his dad concluded that it would be folly, it could only lead to a quagmire, were he to invade Iraq rather than just expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

Junior, always following in daddy’s footsteps but with much smaller shoes, has done the same thing to the Georgians. With less competence, less pure motives, and possibly as much destruction.

The Georgians that Mr. Bush loudly proclaimed as vital to American interests (at least oil interests), who proclaimed him as a great friend to Georgia and named a thoroughfare after him, will shortly need to learn how to speak Putinese. Junior’s empty boasts in support of the Georgians, which he wrongly assumed were harmless and victimless, like all his political acts, have helped speed the demise of Georgian independence.

Will someone give Junior an energy bar and a new stationary bicycle and tell him to stay in the basement. Do it when Cheney wants to corral him for some of those pardons. Make sure the water cooler and snack bar are full. Take their phones, and turn out the lights. They’ve done far too much damage to the world to let them keep playing with other children.

i’m curious to know what buildings, compounds, etc the russians hit. were they just lobbing bombs hither and yon to remind the georgians that georgia is closer to the russian border than to the u.s. border?

or did they go after some military or state targets in which that the americans and georgians held a common interest?

on another tact, i don’t know that it is a central issue here, but isn’t there an incipient oil pipleline somewhere in the mix (mess)?

As for the law of unintended consequences, whose validity Mr. Bush proves daily, let’s watch what happens to all those friendly Chinese faces that George went to Sunday mass with in Beijing.

Admittedly, it was a “designated church” formally acceptable to Beijing authorities. Which means it carefully toes the line and omits the same parts of the bible also offensive to medieval church fathers: the parts about giving up material things in preference to helping others and all those bits about righteous prophets berating errant leaders. But to the extent it encourages others to act beyond their and the international community’s ability to resist official condemnation of collective worship as antithetical to party control, it may lead to the same outcomes as for the Georgians.

Bush reputedly went to war in Iraq, in part, because his gut told him his dad had wronged the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who had rebelled against Saddam. They were crushed after the First Gulf War when his dad concluded that it would be folly, it could only lead to a quagmire, were he to invade Iraq rather than just expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

I’m not a fan of psychodramatic explanations for our foreign policy. Bush’s “gut” didn’t tell him to do anything. The important people who put him in power did.

The American government has a long history of inciting others to revolt, then abandoning them when the revolution goes bad. We abandoned the Highland Vietnamese Montanards who we employed to fight the Viet Cong. We abandoned the southern Shiites and the northern Kurds who we encouraged to revolt against Saddam. We strongly encouraged the Hungarians (and others) to revolt against the USSR, promising support, then listened passively as the last free Hungarian radio stations went quiet, one by one, desperately asking for support. We supported the Czechoslovakians until the Soviet tanks rolled in (I was an Army Captain stationed in Frankfurt in 1968. My German employee kept me informed of the Russian invasion because the US Army had a total lock down on any action or information.)

I well remember the reported statement of one CIA officer who had been making official promises of support to the Kurds when suddenly Saddam’s tanks rolled in. He was airlifted out, and the Kurds were abandoned to their fate contrary to everything he had been officially telling them. Then, when some of the Kurdish leaders later escaped (without American assistance)and asked for asylum, they were imprisoned by the US government as potential Saddam spies – based at best on allegations by their political rivals. No evidence.

Promises from American officials aren’t worth the paper they are printed on – and they never write down promises anyway. Too incriminating. Now it’s the Georgians who are learning this lesson.

Federal agents such as the FBI and DEA do not treat their confidential informants any better.

They were almost certainly “just lobbing bombs hither and yon.” The Russian army consists of two year conscripts who are the ten percent too stupid, without connections, or uneducated to avoid the recruiter and too poor to bribe their way out. Their platoon sergeants are similar two year conscripts sent on short courses and promoted to supervise the rabble. There are a few qualified warrant officers who direct the most technical jobs, but that is rarely the artillery. In essence, the troops, including sergeants, are poorly educated and badly motivated.

As an ex-artilleryman myself I can assure you that you need a surveyor to determine where the guns are located, a well-trained fire control specialist to calculate the angle of the gun from its surveyed location and the amount of powder to be used when it is fired, and a well-trained forward observer to determine the target and type of ammunition. None of these are jobs that can be done by an unwilling two year conscript.

The Russian Army, like the Soviet Army it came from, instead uses massed artillery and fires area fire to cover a large piece of ground. They don’t do subtle missions like firing at a military target and avoiding the nearby civilian apartment building. They always use the biggest possible hammer, since they cannot deal with precise targeting.

Of course, the Georgian Army comes from the same Soviet tradition. So don’t expect either side to try to spare civilians. They aren’t capable of it. The will send in an army to conquer a piece of ground and when they do, it will be devastated.

“Sparing the civilians” is a piece of sophistication that is unique to the western armed forces, and as the reports from Afghanistan show, isn’t something that has been perfected yet. Although I will say that the western problem is more one of identifying the wrong target rather than simply not being able to hit a precise target and leaving the surrounding area undamaged.

The US policy towards Russia is more neo-con BS. I thought NATO stood for “North Atlantic”. What in the hell is the US doing pushing NATO membership on places like Georgia and the Ukraine? IMO, after the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, there was no good reason for NATO to exist except as an expansion of military power controlled by the US. I remember a pitch to a military group I belong to by a nice LtCdr from the UK on the role of NATO a couple of years ago that was nothing more than laughable.

The sooner the US gets out of Russia’s face, the more peaceful the world will be. I don’t know whether to cringe or laugh ever time I hear or read about the US telling Russia what to do in regards to Georgia. After what we have done in Iraq we should just shut up.

Since when are NATO and the U.S. synonymous? Germany, Great Britain, France and others didn’t have a say in NATO expansion? And do you completely discount the public opinion of the NATO’s newer members?

Russia is not a placid, peace loving nation. It would treat its near abroad and its former satellites the way we have treated Central America, if that analogy works for you.

We’re not pushing NATO membership “on” Georgia, either, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with pushing such an alliance anyway — pushing it as far as could be done while Russia was down was a good bipartisan policy that none of those countries regrets in light of this week’s events. The problem is is that the Bush administration is so criminal, and criminally incompetent, that they can’t be stewards of that policy any more, not to mention the fact that we — and the Georgians — are in Iraq and thus not merely hated, but weak.

NATO was the alliance against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was originally gobbling up as much of Europe as it could get.

The only reason for the term “North Atlantic” in NATO was because it included the US and Canada. There was no real geographic meaning. NATO existed to oppose the Soviet Union.

Question. Is Russia the inheritor of the expansionist dreams of the revolutionary Communist Soviet Union? Or has the American effort to “expand democracy” made America the new revolutionary ideological power in the world and Russia the new defender of the status quo?

To the extent that the new world order remains a bipolar US/Russian one, that question will drive the propaganda wars.

The one ability that allows Cheney to rule in Bush’s stead is his Svengali like ability to manipulate Bush’s ego. From “Follow this advice or you’ll be a steer,” to “history will prove you right,” Cheney hits his gut every time and “makes it so”.

I haven’t a clue about why it works, but it does. No competent executive or personality would allow Cheney such dominance over him or his decision making; they would allow no subordinate such power, or provide him so much cover for his actions.

As Russian forces invaded Georgia late last week and the two nations engaged in what is increasingly being called a full-scale war, Israel’s leadership expressed concerns that Moscow could retaliate for continued Israeli military support of Georgia by selling advanced arms to Iran and Syria. ” Israel Today

————————————————————————–

“A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

The Israelis should be careful or they will acquire a reputation for dumping their allies unde pressure.

Until now the US has held the record for consistency in that field of political action.

Is it coincidence that the US and Israel both acted over the last few years to encourage Georgia in defiance of its giant neighbor?

Israel has 80,000 immigrant Georgian Jews in its population. The defense minister of Georgia is reported to be a “former” Israeli citizen.

Bravado is the Israeli style in international relations and in managing occupations. Rashness bordering on adolescent conceit is another way to describe the style.

I guess Russia doesn’t frighten as easily as some of the entities that the Israelis usually deal with.

Before its abrupt end, Mr. Stevens’s journey had taken him from the beaches of San Clemente, Calif., and the slopes of Sun Valley, Idaho, all the way up the Republican ranks to a job in the first Bush White House at age 26. And it launched him on a jet-setting career as a political fixer manipulating elections in backrooms and palaces from Costa Rica to Croatia, Thailand to Togo, South Korea to the former Soviet Union.

…

Or the time in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, when the same colleague, who insisted on anonymity to protect continuing relationships, dispatched Mr. Stevens to work on the election to succeed President Eduard A. Shevardnadze. “The problem with the way the election came down was that Shevardnadze’s successor, Mikhail Saakashvili, was so popular, and the opponents were so outgunned, that it was almost going to be a flawed election,” the man said. “There had to be the semblance of a free election. And Saakashvili, who was educated here, looked like an American tool. So to help the Russians have less heartburn, we sent Greg over to help one of his opponents.”

According to “one of Mr. Stevens’s colleagues in international political intrigue.”

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

”We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,” the State Department official said. ”We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not.”

Why attack just Ossetia if you attack Georgia then then the Georgians feel the pain and think twice I’m guessing nobody in the Bush administration has ever won or even lost a fight.

None could have predicted 9/11, that there would be no WMD found in Iraq (everyone cool thought that there would be), Katrina (or that shoe shopping during Katrina would kill her VP chances), that the NY Times would publish her Bush is my husband remark, that Russia wouldn’t stand up to little Georgia?
Have I missed anything?

You are right Bush was training the Georgian troops Bush had to have known what Georgia was doing after all Georgia wants in on NATO attacking a break away republic protected by Russia would mean war if they did it after they were part of NATO.
Georgia had to take back their break away republic now before they got into NATO.
But why did Bush believe that Russia would not attack Georgia if Georgia attacked South Ossetia.
Does Bush really trust the Russians that much?

Free elections, indeed. Mikhail Saakashvili had selected his own flags, one of which is likely to be burned often in the aftermath of his highly destructive escapade.

I very much doubt there was any ‘understanding’ between Bu$hlerites and Putinites over Saakashvili’s vicious land-grab plans. You can tell simply by the level of atrocities committed by Georgians that this was not something approved on high.

The more I read, the more complicated this is and I realize now it is not simply analagous to the march into Hungary or Czech. However I know this.

1) McCain is stupidly falling way short of understanding this conflict.
2) Today “we are not all Georgians.” Today we are bumbling occupiers of Iraq and Paper Tiger Rice and Paper Tiger Bush can’t do jack shit about the conflict and had little to do with the cease fire if it comes to pass.

You mean if you’re in SF. I do support Cindy Sheehan, and do live in California, but can’t vote for her because I live in another district. I’ll have to support Sheehan the same way that I urge the rest of you non-San Franciscans. With cash.

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that we should have intervened in Iraq in 1991 or today in Georgia. I’m arguing that a bully who, for his own amusement or advantage, goads other people into fighting with false promises of support for one side or the other is morally reprehensible.

But, maybe it was all pre-arranged: a soliloquy as phony as those written into the Senate record without ever having occurred.

Maybe it was, as someone suggested, a way to redeploy Georgian troops away from the Iraq-Iran border so that there would be a great excuse for replacing them there on the border with Americans.

If this was a charade I wonder what Bush promised to Georgia and Russia.

McCain reaction to events in Georgia in its apparent clueless dissonance is very much like what happened with his timely trip to Columbia. You can sort of see there’s a lot of stuff going on in the background to connect events, (known before the fact) to his campaign rhetoric, but nevertheless the events appear phony against the statements and very poorly staged. This is what happens when the reality they create are done with less skill and intelligence.

I got here late, and I was readin an wonderin who was gonna be the first to mention poppy and the Iraqis

WilliamOckham wins the prize, even though he kinda missed the big analogy for the small one:

poppy stabbed the Shia in the back after the war, but BEFORE the war, poppy displayed foreign policy acumen worthy of alice in wonderland

Saddam was a happy, if somewhat vicious puppet of the repuglitards until poppy;s brain fart in july of 1990. poppy sent our ambassador to tell saddam we didn’t give a shit about Kuwait, and then threw a hissy fit when saddam invaded Kuwait

after viewing the bush family Oedipal comedy of errors, I’ve come to realize that dopey repeats poppy’s mistakes in reverse

poppy left saddam in power and screwed the pooch

dopey ousted saddam and screwed a hundred pooches

poppy would never trust the russians and he got played like a violin

dopey trusted the russians and got played like a whole fucking symphony